Most people know that beef consumption plays a major role in the development
of heart disease, strokes, and cancer. But the over-consumption of beef is also a major
cause of human hunger and poverty, deforestation, spreading deserts, water pollution,
water scarcity, global warming, species extinction, and animal suffering. We in the United
States are a big part of the problem. Americans consume almost a quarter of all the beef
produced in the world. Every 24 hours 100,000 cattle are slaughtered in the United States;
the average American consumes the meat of seven 1,100-pound animals in his or her
lifetime.

HEALTH

Each year, the death toll continues to mount for consumers of beef
and other red meats. According to a report by the U.S. Surgeon General, more than 70
percent of deaths in this country -- more than 1.5 million annually -- are related to
diet, particularly the over-consumption of beef and other foods high in cholesterol and
saturated fat. Study after study confirms that consumption of red meat is a primary factor
in the development of heart disease, strokes, and colon and breast cancer. The American
Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the
American Academy of Pediatrics all recommend that people reduce their consumption of red
meat and other animal-derived foods, and eat more grain, fresh vegetables, and fruits
instead. Recently, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
found that beef contains the highest concentration of herbicides of any food sold in
America. The NAS also found that beef ranks second only to tomatoes as the food posing the
greatest cancer risk due to pesticide contamination, and ranks third of all foods in
insecticide contamination. Aside from smoking, there is probably no greater personal
health risk than eating too much beef and other meat.

GLOBAL HUNGER

The beef addiction of the United States and other industrialized nations has
set off a global food crisis. Today, hundreds of millions of cattle are being fed precious
grain so that American and European consumers can enjoy the pleasures of
"marbled" beef. Meanwhile, nearly one billion people suffer from hunger and
malnutrition, and between 40 and 60 million people -- mostly children -- die each year
from starvation and related diseases. Currently, more than 70 percent of the U.S. grain
harvest -- and more than one third of the grain produced in the world -- is fed to cattle
and other livestock. We could provide proper nourishment to more than a billion people if
we used the world's agricultural lands to grow food for human consumption rather than feed
for cattle and other livestock.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Forests, particularly the rain forests of Central America and the
Amazon, are being burned and cleared to make way for cattle pasture. Since 1960, more than
25 percent of the Central American forests have been lost to beef production -- most of it
for export to the United States and Europe. It has been estimated that for every
quarter-pound fast-food hamburger made from Central American beef, 55 square feet of
tropical forest -- including 165 pounds of unique species of plants and animals -- is
destroyed. Today, the world's 1.3 billion cattle are stripping vegetation and compacting
and eroding soil, thus creating deserts out of grasslands. More than 60 percent of the
world's rangelands have been damaged by overgrazing during the past half century. In the
United States, cattle have done more to alter the environment of the West than all the
highways, dams, strip mines, and power plants put together. Cattle production is a major
cause of water pollution. In the United States, cattle produce nearly one billion tons of
organic waste each year. It has been estimated that cattle and other livestock account for
a significant percentage of pollutants in the nation's rivers, lakes, streams and
aquifers. Raising cattle also requires vast amounts of water. Nearly half the water
consumed in the United States is used to grow feed for cattle and other livestock -- while
our precious stores of fresh water dwindle at an alarming rate. The grain-fed cattle
complex is now a significant factor in the generation of three major gases -- carbon
dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide -- that are responsible for global warming. The
burning of the world's forests for cattle pasture has released billions of tons of CO2
into the atmosphere. The world's 1.3 billion cattle and other ruminant livestock emit 60
million tons of methane through their digestive systems directly into the atmosphere each
year. Moreover, to produce feed crops for cattle requires the use of petro-chemical
fertilizers which emit vast amounts of nitrous oxide. These gases are building up in the
atmosphere, blocking heat from escaping the planet, and could cause a global climate
change of cataclysmic proportions in the next century. Cattle and beef production is
contributing significantly to the dramatic loss of biodiversity, including species
extinction, now occurring across the globe. In all major cattle producing countries,
wildlife habitat is being destroyed to create cattle pasture, as in the rain forests of
Central America, or the huge cattle population is destroying habitat and using up food and
water needed by wildlife. In the United States and Australia, cattle ranching has resulted
in the purposeful mass extermination of predator and "nuisance" species -- a
virtual war on wildlife. In Africa, millions of wild animals have died of thirst or
starvation after finding their migratory paths blocked by fences built to contain cattle.

ANIMAL SUFFERING

Cattle are exposed to harsh living conditions, rough handling,
and often outright abuse and cruelty throughout their short lives. Cattle are routinely
castrated, dehorned, and hot-iron branded without anesthetics. Cattle released on the open
range must fend for themselves for several months, often succumbing to weather extremes
and other dangers. Animals transported to feedlots and slaughterhouses are often shocked
with electric prods, beaten, kicked, dragged and deprived of food and water for long
periods. Overcrowded trucks cause broken limbs; injured and sick animals are routinely
dragged out of trucks and onto the kill floor where slaughter techniques remain primitive
and brutal. The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences estimates
that the sickness, injury, and premature death of cattle represents an economic loss of
$4.6 billion a year in the United States.

To an intelligent being from another planet, U.S. food and
agricultural policies and programs would appear deranged. Today, U.S. taxpayers are
helping to support an agricultural system that feeds livestock before human beings,
devastates peasant farmers, causes food shortages and hunger for millions of people in
developing countries, and forces tens of thousands of small American farmers out of
business. The current system also promotes the production and consumption of fatty and
chemical-laden animal-derived foods that are killing us, and is ruining and poisoning the
very soil and water we need to keep our agricultural system running.

Beyond Beef is promoting a fundamental restructuring of U.S. food and
agriculture policy in order to reverse these destructive trends. We need to make a
transition from feed to food production by rewarding the nation's small farmers with
higher prices for growing food for people instead of feed for livestock. Those who wish to
continue producing grain-fed beef should have to pay the true market value of the grain.

The world can no longer afford the social and environmental costs of
producing grain-fed, or even grass-fed, beef at current levels. Reducing the production
and consumption of beef by at least 50 percent will help free agricultural land to grow
food for human consumption rather than feed for livestock. Fewer cattle will also lessen
the environmental toll on the world's remaining forests and grasslands. Encouraging
consumers who continue to consume some beef to demand beef from cattle that are humanely
raised under sustainable standards will help encourage a new commercial market for organic
beef -- a market niche that can be filled by the family farm. Only the small family farmer
can produce beef and other farm products humanely and sustainably.

The Beyond Beef program is working to restore the position of the
family farm in American life. In the United States today, three voracious multi-national
corporations hold a near total monopoly on beef production. Their priority is cheap
livestock feed. U.S. government policies support these corporations by keeping market
prices below the cost of production; American taxpayers are subsidizing the production of
beef. The small family farmer is in a box. He must produce more product at a return below
the cost of production in an attempt to spread his fixed cost over more volume. This
dilemma makes the family farmer easy prey for the huge agribusiness monopolies that
dictate the rules of the game. Unable to get enough income, the family farmer is forced to
abandon beef production altogether in favor of maximum yield production of monoculture
feed grain. Even then, he's not receiving a high enough price for the feed to cover his
costs. Moreover, attempts to increase yields requires the use of more and more chemical
fertilizers that, in the end, are self-defeating because they increase costs and lower
yields in the long run -- they are also polluting the environment.

Grain sold in the world market for a price that is below the cost of
production is also devastating third world farmers. Unlike their American counterparts,
however, they are not receiving taxpayer subsidies to supplement their income. They must
either stop farming, try to get a job in the city, or expand agricultural production into
environmentally sensitive areas such as the rain forest. Efforts by progressive farm
organizations to establish fair prices for corn, wheat, and other crops have been
consistently blocked by the giant agribusiness corporations that feed cattle in huge
feedlots. The owners of these "beef factories" want to pay the lowest possible
price for feed, and they don't care how many small and medium-sized family farmers go out
of business or which rain forest gets destroyed. Their only concern is maximum short-term
profit. If consumers unite with family farmers to break the monopoly power of
agribusiness, it can lead the way to both financial security for family farmers and the
elimination of ecologically unsound beef production.

Farmers and consumers also need to work together to defeat new
government proposals which would open the U.S. market to greatly expanded amounts of
imported beef. Most of this imported beef is produced on rain forest land in Latin
America, making it extremely low priced. Not only would the expansion of beef imports
accelerate rain forest destruction, it would drive down even further the price paid to
family farmers, pushing many tens of thousands out of business and leaving the market
solely in the hands of the huge conglomerates. For the moment, corporate control over the
livestock industry means that farmers and consumers will have to establish a number of
alternative marketing routes in order to meet the demand for organically raised beef. We
need to follow the lead of other countries, where consumer and farmer groups have agreed
on specific standards for price, quality, and ecological considerations, and then
established a special label for meats complying with these standards.

The Beyond Beef campaign will challenge the unwarranted power amassed
by America's agribusiness corporations and the cattle and beef industry giants...and
promote a new commercial market for organically raised beef helping to restore a viable
market share for the nation's family farmers.